


Thief

by rhodrymavelyne



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:28:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24149716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhodrymavelyne/pseuds/rhodrymavelyne
Summary: Garrett Jacob Hobbs chooses to haunt someone else for a change, the one he truly blames for his death and the loss of his daughter.
Relationships: Will Graham/Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 25





	Thief

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place sometime before Hannibal had Abigail confront the corpse of her father. I don’t own Hannibal, but for the past several months it has owned me.

The corpse was arranged, sitting on the couch, waiting for Abigail. Waiting for inevitable confrontation so she could move on. 

“Thief.” The word reflected upon the man’s eyes for a moment. 

“Choosing to haunt someone other than Will Graham for the loss of your daughter?” Hannibal gazed down at the man who was like yet unlike him in so many ways. Even now he and Garret Jacob Hobbs vied for control of Abigail’s heart and mind, perhaps Will’s as well. "I doubt you blame him any more than he blames himself for her fate."

“Blame Will Graham? That pretty doe-eyed creature who wasted so many bullets trying to keep me at a distance?” Garrett Jacob Hobbs laughed in spite of the yellow slit in this throat. Pus oozed out of it. Rotting meat, quite unsightly. “No. He’s not the one I blame. He’s not the one who set me up and stole my daughter.” Sightless eyes sought out Hannibal Lecter in the room. “It pleases me to haunt him, to remind you that you’re not only killer in his thoughts, playing with all that delicious, naked vulnerability within his mind. It pleases me to take someone precious from you as you once took Abigail from me.”

“Someone was bound to take Abigail from you.” Hannibal regarded the corpse with a steady eye. Perhaps Will’s empathy was contagious. “You were not doing a very good job as a father.”

“Are you?” The mouth didn’t move yet the voice issued forth. “You’re certainly not doing a good job as a psychiatrist.”

“Therapy only works if someone is willing to accept whom they are, not who they want to be.” He’d said something like this to Jack Crawford, an oblique warning of what was to come. He’d given Miriam Lass back to Jack, perhaps in anticipation of what he was going to take from him. Not that Jack could truly hang onto Will any longer, not after letting him go. He’d given Will Graham to Hannibal Lecter the moment he’d asked for a psychological profile whether he wished to acknowledge this or not. “I’m simply helping my patients accept themselves even if the world does not.”

“Are you truly helping them accept themselves as whom they are? Or encouraging them to embrace the part of themselves you want them to?” A wet chuckle echoed in the air. “I know all about encouragement, coaxing an impressionable young mind to kill, to accept killing because you’re lonely. Because you long for companionship in the hunt. Because you need one particular companion to join you, no matter how selfish your desire might be.”

Hannibal stopped to consider the dead man’s words. “I’m nothing like you.”

“Your passion for Will Graham is.” Hobbs’s face and mouth remained immobile. “You want him badly enough that you’ll ignore whatever you think is right or proper to have him. You’ll sacrifice anyone just to hold onto him.”

Hannibal thought about this. Yes, there was some truth to this, for all it came from the lips of a dead man who could not possibly be speaking to him right now. 

Unless you were Will Graham. Unless your mind worked in such a way that unraveled the rules of reality around you, letting them fall like gossamer sheets away from your naked mind, exposed to the wildness of emotion and empathy. 

Tightness gathered in Hannibal’s chest, temples, and yes, his groin at the thought of that limitless, vulnerable possibility, of what could be accomplished with such a mind and such a man. 

“Some things are worth casting aside what’s right and proper for,” he murmured. “As are some people.”

Garrett Jacob Hobbs didn’t answer. Perhaps he’d never spoken. 

After all, he was dead.


End file.
